Wendy Doniger memoir recalls Sanskrit studies and 'fascinating fellow' Ravana

When Wendy Doniger went to college in the 1950s, she decided to study Sanskrit, a very old language from India.

She was the only student who kept studying it, so her professor taught her all by herself.

Her professor was Daniel Ingalls, the main Sanskrit teacher at Harvard University.

They met in a tiny room at the very top of the huge library, where pigeons sat outside the window.

Once, she figured out that a girl in an old poem was playing with a yoyo, and her professor thanked her in a footnote in his book.

Wendy liked reading the Puranas, old Indian storybooks about gods and goddesses, more than the fancy poems other scholars loved.

Some serious scholars did not think those stories were important, but she loved them.

She wrote her final school project about the god Shiva from those storybooks.

When it was time for her big oral exam, her professor simply told her wonderful stories about Ravana, a character from a famous epic, and she passed.

Wendy grew up to be a well-known scholar who loves sharing these ancient Indian stories.